Here are some of the differences between the products to be offered by the exchange operators.

CONTRACT UNIT

-The Cboe Bitcoin Futures Contract will use the ticker XBT and will equal one bitcoin.

-The CME Bitcoin Futures Contract will use the ticker BTC and will equal five bitcoins.

PRICING AND SETTLEMENT

-Both Cboe’s and CME’s bitcoin futures contracts will be settled in U.S. dollars, allowing exposure to the bitcoin without actually having to hold any of the cryptocurrency.

-Cboe’s contract will be priced off of a single auction at 4 p.m. Eastern time (2100 GMT) on the final settlement date on the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange.

-CME’s contract will be priced off of the CME Bitcoin Reference Rate, an index that references pricing data from cryptocurrency exchanges, currently made up of Bitstamp, GDAX, itBit and Kraken.

TRADING HOURS

-Cboe’s XBT contract will trade on CFE, with regular trading hours of 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Eastern time on Mondays and 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m Tuesday through Friday. Extended hours will be 6 p.m. Sunday to 9:30 a.m. Monday, and 4:30 p.m. Monday through to 9:30 a.m. Friday.

-CME’s BTC will trade on CME Globex and CME ClearPort Sunday to Friday from 6 p.m. - 5 p.m. Eastern time with a one-hour break each day beginning at 5 p.m.

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MARGIN RATE AND CLEARING

-Cboe’s contract will clear through the Options Clearing Corporation and a 30 percent margin rate will apply.

-CME’s contract will clear through CME ClearPort and will have a 35 percent initial margin rate.

CONTRACT EXPIRATIONS

-Cboe said it may list up to four weekly contracts, three near-term serial months, and three months on the March quarterly cycle.

-CME said it will list monthly contracts for the nearest two months in the March quarterly cycle (March, June, Sept., Dec.) plus the nearest two serial months not in the March quarterly cycle.

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PRICE LIMITS AND TRADING HALTS

-Cboe will halt trading in its contract for 2 minutes if the best bid in the XBT futures contract closest to expiration is 10 percent or more above or below the daily settlement price of that contract on the prior business day.

Once trading resumes, if the best bid in the XBT futures contract closest to expiration is 20 percent or more above or below the daily settlement price of that contract on the prior business day, the futures will be halted for 5 minutes.

-CME will apply price limits, also known as circuit breakers, to its bitcoin futures of 7 percent, 13 percent, and 20 percent to the futures fixing price. Trading will not be allowed outside of the 20 percent price limit.

Sources: Cboe and CME

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Britain wants to increase regulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity.

With demand for Bitcoin surging, fuelling a 1,000 percent rally in its value so far this year, the British finance ministry said it expected negotiations over changes to the EU rules would conclude later this year or in early 2018.

"Toys R Us has aisles and aisles stacked high with products, but they will never win that fight with the internet."

Ms Hardcastle said Toys R Us was stuck between the extensive range and lower pricing of online retail and the theatrics and free entertainment offered by toy stores such as Hamleys, Lego and Disney stores.

"Toys R Us does not fit into either of these market spaces".

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Bitcoin hit an all-time high just below $8,000 on Friday, on talk that a software upgrade whose suspension sent the cryptocurrency into a tailspin at the end of last week was, after all, going ahead within hours.

Talk that the upgrade - which could split or “fork” bitcoin into two versions - would go ahead was driven by a statement on the website of Coinbase, the world’s largest bitcoin company with operations in 32 countries.

“The Bitcoin Segwit2x fork is expected to occur in the next six hours,” it said in a statement published at 1004 GMT.

If a bitcoin clone were created, any holders would also in theory instantly become owners of the new spin-off.

Bitcoin, generally highly volatile, has been on a particularly wild ride, sliding at the end of last week to as low as $5,555 after plans for Segwit2x were suspended, before bouncing more than 40 percent since Sunday.

{module [281]}

It reached as high as $7,997 in early Asian trading on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange BTC=BTSP, before easing back a touch to trade broadly flat by 1115 GMT at $7,863.

Market-watchers said speculation about the fork was driving bitcoin higher. If it went ahead as expected, holders of the cryptocurrency would be able to sell the spin-off at a profit if the market were to assign it any value.

But in a post on the Medium blogging platform, the company’s communications director David Farmer said Coinbase did not expect the fork to successfully split bitcoin in two, as it lacked the necessary support from the network to do so.

“Whenever people hear ‘fork’ nowadays the price jumps, as people hope to get the free dividend,” said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency data analysis site Cryptocompare.

“There is also a resulting spike in demand for people entering bitcoin” from other cryptocurrencies.

Farmer said the company was actively monitoring the situation and that all funds stored in Coinbase wallets remained safe. All bitcoin buying and selling would be suspended on Coinbase in the hour prior to the fork, which is expected between 1400 and 1600 GMT.

Bitcoin is on track for its best week since July. For the year, it is up more than 700 percent.

Reuters

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Bitcoin dropped below $7,000 on Friday to trade more than $1,000 down from an all-time high hit on Wednesday, as some traders dumped it for a clone called Bitcoin Cash, sending its value up around a third.

Bitcoin has been on a tear in recent months, with a vertiginous sevenfold increase in value since the start of the year that has led to many warnings the bitcoin market - now worth well over $100 billion - has become a bubble that is about to burst.

{module [281]}

It reached a record high of $7,888 around 1800 GMT on Wednesday after a software upgrade planned for next week that could have split the cryptocurrency in a so-called “fork” was suspended.

But it has quickly retreated from that peak, falling to as low as $6,718 around 1330 GMT on Friday. It later recovered a touch to trade around $6,880 by 1645 GMT, but that was still down almost 4 percent on the day.

“Bitcoin is all ups and downs,” said Thomas Bertani, chief executive of Eidoo, a cryptocurrency wallet provider that recently became the first startup in the space to take out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

“The market realized that the price rise was an over-reaching, so people started selling... (and) there are many long and short positions that amplify price movements.”

As bitcoin tumbled, Bitcoin Cash, which was generated from another software split on Aug.1, surged, trading up as much as 35 percent on the day to around $850, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.

Bitcoin Cash’s transactions are processed in so-called “blocks” that are larger in capacity than bitcoin‘s, so can therefore in theory allow for more transactions to be processed at any given time, making transaction fees much cheaper.

{module [296]}

The fork that had been planned for next week, known as “SegWit2x”, had also intended to increase the capacity of the blocks, and could thus have reduced fees for bitcoin transactions.

Any investors, therefore, that see bitcoin more as a currency than a store of value might be choosing to buy into Bitcoin Cash now that Segwit2x had been scrapped, Bertani said.

“People who had been supporting Segwit2x could as an alternative move to Bitcoin Cash,” he said.

“There are good reasons to believe that Bitcoin Cash could be an alternative for people who believe that low fees on bitcoin transactions are needed today.”

Reuters

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Rent, car loans, mortgages, credit cards, pay day loans, unsecured credit, overdrafts - with real wages falling, the amount of debt we are taking on is rising and the pressure we are under is increasing.

For many, a savings cash buffer to deal with shocks and rising prices is non-existent.

When it comes to the build up of debt, this is a classic story of supply and demand.

The digitisation of financial products - making many loans little more than a mobile phone swipe away - has meant that supply has become broader and easier.

Historically low interest rates have also made products cheaper, meaning that taking on debt appears to be low cost, in the short term at least.

The demand side has also ballooned as consumers have struggled to balance income and expenditure.

In seven of the last 10 years, real incomes have fallen, with the increase in prices higher than the increase in wages.

That means that in December, people have less household income than they did the previous January.

{module [296]}

'Vulnerable'

Add to that the benefits freeze and the public sector pay cap and, in such a situation, borrowing can seem to make sense, to make ends meet if nothing else.

If you could afford it, would you ever splurge $10,000 on a pair of headphones? What about some other indulgence? Would you?

Some of the most coveted sets, like Sennheiser's Orpheus or the Onkyo Diamond, can cost tens of thousands. But is the sound quality of a $10,000 pair of headphones really 10 times as good as the pair that costs $1,000?

Expensive items and experiences are often branded as higher quality, exclusive, bespoke, or offering greater amenities or services. But are the most expensive things in life always better? What really makes people part with their hard-earned cash?

Research into how cost affects our perceptions shows that price matters so much to our understanding of value that we sometimes rate pricey things as superior or more effective, even if they are the exact same quality as the less expensive option.

In one study by The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Stanford University scholars, people not only rate the same wine more highly when they’re told it is more expensive, functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI scans taken of their brains while they were drinking the wine suggest participants enjoyed the experience of drinking it more.

In another study using placebo pain killers, participants who took a fake pain-killing drug that they were told cost $2.50 per pill experienced more pain reduction during a series of shocks than participants who were told the pill cost only 10 cents.

{module [279]}

Searching for ultimate experiences

But how does price and perception play into our purchasing decisions outside the laboratory? If an item is twice as expensive, do buyers assume it’s twice as good?

Michael Norton, a psychologist and professor of business administration at Harvard Business School says yes. In fact, we may consider the experience to be more than twice as good. We’re motivated to splurge because we’re seeking peak experiences, his research suggests.

The restaurant, or dessert or film that’s rated three stars by everyone is the safe choice while the one that’s rated with one and five stars could be terrible or could be amazing, he says. So “in this case, we find that people will gamble and pick the one- and five-star rated one, because they’re trying to get to that totally amazing experience, even at the risk of getting a really bad one.”

Norton says the same logic can be used to think about why people buy very expensive products or experiences. “There’s an extra boost when you go up in the quality of experiences. So, it’s possible that a $10,000 bottle of whiskey would be more than twice as pleasurable than a $5,000 bottle of whiskey because it’s such a peak experience way out in the extreme.”

Some of us are searching for unique leisure experiences, even when they might be less pleasurable than other options, in order to build their “experiential CV.” “By collecting memorable experiences, consumers obtain a sense of accomplishment and progress, and enhance their self-worth,” Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz write.

Joshua Cartu is an amateur ‘gentleman’ racing car driver, entrepreneur and avid collector of Ferraris. He says he splurges on cars not just because he loves them, but because of other accompanying perks like access to special events and an exclusive social circle.

“The feeling of happiness that you get when you accumulate material things is fleeting. Like other types of things, it’s less and less rewarding each time,” he says. “By buying Ferraris I get be to part of a community of very special, interesting people that have the same passion as I do.”

Cartu says one of the best things he ever splurged on was flying a MiG fighter jet in Russia. “We flew at twice the height of a passenger plane. So, in the middle of the day I saw stars in the sky and was able to observe the curvature of the earth. It was one of the best experiences of my entire life.”

While most of us will never be able to afford to fly a fighter jet or race a Ferrari, researchers suggest that desire to build ‘the experiential CV’ can account for more modest splurges, like staying at an ice hotel, or seeking out something strange to eat, like bacon-flavoured ice cream.

{module [280]}

Flashing the cash

Some people are spending big purely to signal they’re successful. “You might feel like you need to show everyone you’ve ‘arrived’,” says Cartu. “It was a big deal for me because I didn’t come from money, and I had to show all these people that I was now rubbing shoulders with, that I was at their level. But after a while and a bit of reflection, the need to impress people faded away.”

Economic theory shows demand for some goods increases as their price drops. By contrast, a ‘Veblen good’ is more in demand as its price increases, because of its exclusive and coveted nature.

“There’s a general principle that there’s a social comparison aspect of one-upping other people in our consumption. If I have a nicer bottle of wine (…) than you do then I win, and have shown how high status I am,” Norton says. But he adds people are polarised and often choose to be either extremely conspicuous or extremely inconspicuous to show high status.

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor at USC and the author of The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class says that people among the top income groups in America are increasingly buying less conspicuous luxury goods like organic high-end groceries in place of more conspicuous things like designer handbags.

“Material goods are less of a signifier of social position today. The deluge of material goods means that they are not as rare or scarce or luxurious as in the past,” she says. “There is a greater value in experiences and the narrative around goods as justifying their cost and giving them status.”

{module [281]}

The feel-good factor

And here’s the simplest reason of all: people splurge on luxury goods because they think it will make them happy. Norton, who co-authored Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, says that the amount of happiness you get from spending money will depend on how you spend it and not necessarily how much.

Norton says splurging on items for ourselves is finite and doesn’t add up to increases in happiness over time. Instead, he suggests spending money on experiences rather than things. “Most of us seem to be maxed out on the happiness we can get from stuff alone.”

But there might be an even better way to get your kicks. Norton’s research proves that giving to others can make us happier people.

“It’s not that when you buy things for yourself they don’t make you happy in the moment. Of course they do. That’s why we buy them. It just doesn’t seem to add up to much happiness over time,” he says. “Giving to others seems to add up to happiness over time.”

BBC

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Rovio, the maker of hit mobile game “Angry Birds,” will look to buy up other players in the gaming industry following its listing on Friday, its main owner Kaj Hed said.

The Finnish company’s shares got off to a flying start on their stock market debut, trading up as much as 7 percent from their initial public offering price (IPO) of 11.50 euros.

Hed, who cut his stake from 69 percent to 37 percent in the IPO, said Rovio now had more muscle to do deals in a gaming sector he believes is ripe for consolidation.

“We have a clear will to be a consolidator, and we are in a very good position to do that,” he told Reuters at Rovio’s headquarters by the Baltic Sea.

“Many good (gaming industry) players face the question of whether they should go public, or whether they should consolidate. Going public is expensive and requires hard work, so finding a partner could be easier.”

Analysts have long urged Rovio to do more to reduce its reliance on the “Angry Birds” franchise.

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Hed, the uncle of Rovio’s co-founder Niklas Hed, said he remained strongly committed to the company.

“The reason that I sold shares was to give the company the liquidity, because that is very important. My intention is to remain as a long-term investor in the company.”

Rovio saw rapid growth after the 2009 launch of the original “Angry Birds” game, but it plunged to an operating loss and cut a third of its staff in 2015 due to a pick up in competition and a shift among consumers to freely available games.

But the 2016 release of 3D Hollywood movie “Angry Birds”, together with new games, have revived the brand and helped sales recover.

In the first half of this year, Rovio’s sales almost doubled from a year earlier to 153 million euros, while core profit increased to 42 million euros from 11 million.

Rovio’s market valuation of around 950 million euros ($1.12 billion), looks high based on Rovio’s historical profit, said Atte Riikola, an analyst at research firm Inderes.

“There seems to be initial demand for (the stock). But given that the IPO was multiple times oversubscribed, the share price reaction is not too dramatic,” he added.

“Profit growth is priced in, so they need to keep up the good performance which they had in the first half of the year.”

Reuters

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Alphabet unit Google has offered to display rival shopping comparison sites via an auction in order to comply with an EU antitrust order to stop favoring its own shopping service, four people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The proposal, which resembles a failed offer made to the European Commission three years ago to settle the case, would allow competitors to bid for any spot in its shopping section known as Product Listing Ads, the people said.

Under the previous proposal aimed at settling the long-running EU antitrust investigation, the world’s most popular internet search engine had reserved the first two places for its own ads.

{module [296]}

The new proposal, submitted to the European Commission on Aug. 29 following a record 2.4-billion-euro ($2.87 billion) fine, would also see Google set a floor price with its own bids minus operating costs.

The offer does not address the issues set out by EU competition regulators, the people said. The Commission had ordered Google to treat rivals and its own service equally.

“This is worse than the commitments,” one of the people said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

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